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The journey is always the same, and never the same. As Ian Bostridge remarks, at the end of his prize-winning book Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, when the wanderer asks Der Leiermann, “Will you play your hurdy-gurdy to my songs?”, in the final song of Winterreise, the ‘crazy but logical procedure would be to go right back to the beginning of the whole cycle and start all over again’.

It felt rather decadent to be sitting in an opera house at 12pm. Even more so given the passion-fuelled excesses of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, which might seem rather too sensual and savage for mid-day consumption.

Manitoba Opera opened its 45th season with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly proving that the aching heart as expressed through art knows no racial or cultural divide, with the Italian composer’s self-avowed favourite opera still able to spread its poetic wings across time and space since its Milan premiere in 1904.

In 1992, concert promoter Heinz Liebrecht introduced pianist Julius Drake to tenor Ian Bostridge and an acclaimed, inspiring musical partnership was born. On Wenlock Edge formed part of their first programme, at Holkham Hall in Norfolk; and, so, in this recital at Middle Temple Hall, celebrating their 25 years of music-making, the duo included Vaughan Williams’ Housman settings for tenor, piano and string quartet alongside works with a seventeenth-century origin or flavour.

Not many (maybe any) of the new operas presented by San Francisco Opera over the past 10 years would lure me to the War Memorial Opera House a second time around. But for Girls of the Golden West just now I would be there again tomorrow night and the next, and I am eagerly awaiting all future productions.

It’s taken a while for Rossini’s Semiramide to reach the Covent Garden stage. The last of the operas which Rossini composed for Italian theatres between 1810-1823, Semiramide has had only one outing at the Royal Opera House since 1887, and that was a concert version in 1986.

‘His master’s masterpiece, the work of heaven’: ‘a common fountain’ from which flow ‘pure silver drops’. At the risk of effulgent hyperbole, I’d suggest that Antonio’s image of the blessed governance and purifying power of the French court - in the opening scene of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi - is also a perfect metaphor for the voice of French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, as it slips through Handel’s roulades like a silken ribbon.

Here are five complete song sets by two of the greatest masters of French song. The performers are highly competent. I should have known, given the rave reviews that their 2015 recording of modern Norwegian songs received.

The opera world barely knows how to handle works that have significant amounts of spoken dialogue. Conductors and stage directors will often trim the dialogue to a bare minimum (Magic Flute), have it rendered as sung recitative (Carmen), or have it spoken in the vernacular though the sung numbers may often be performed in the original language (Die Fledermaus).

Here is the latest CD from a major label promoting a major new soprano. Aida Garifullina is utterly remarkable: a lyric soprano who also can handle coloratura with ease. Her tone has a constant shimmer, with a touch of quick, narrow vibrato even on short notes.

From the start of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s splendid, new production of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre conflict and resolution are portrayed throughout with moving intensity. The central character Brünnhilde is sung by Christine Goerke and her father Wotan by Eric Owens.

Compared to the oft-explored world of German lieder and French chansons, the songs of Russia are unfairly neglected in recordings and in the concert hall. The raw emotion and expansive lyricism present in much of this repertoire was clearly in evidence at the Holywell Music Room for the penultimate day of the celebrated Oxford Lieder Festival.

This concert was an event on several levels - marking a decade since the death of Stockhausen, the fortieth anniversary (almost to the day) since Singcircle first performed STIMMUNG (at the Round House), and their final public performance of the piece. It was also a rare opportunity to hear (and see) Stockhausen’s last completed purely electronic work, COSMIC PULSES - an overwhelming visual and aural experience that anyone who was at this concert will long remember.

Bampton Classical Opera is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2017 Young Singers’ Competition is mezzo-soprano Emma Stannard and the runner-up is tenor Wagner Moreira. The winner of the accompanists’ prize, a new category this year, is Keval Shah.

With this recording of Mozart’s 1771 opera, Il sogno di Scipione (Sicpio’s Dream), Classical Opera continue their progress through the adolescent composer’s precocious achievements and take another step towards the fulfilment of their complete Mozart opera series for Signum Classics.

Parma devotes the months to a major Festival, with other activities in
nearby towns. Parma’s Verdi Festival aims at producing, by 2013, a boxed
set of Teatro Regio DVDs with all Verdi’s operas in a special edition.

In Florence, the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino produced “the
big three” — Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La
Traviata — heard together on three successive nights. These were all
entirely new productions by a young team, specialists in low cost but
innovative work. This festival, a co-production with the elegant, classical
Teatro Romolo Valli will continue in Reggio Emilio, “Verdi
country”, but will not be heard in Parma.

Scene from Il Trovatore

Prices were quite low by European standards. The house was sold out in the
first week of bookings, proceeds reaching € 600.000, about two thirds of
the cost. As comparison, ticket sales in Italian houses cover, on average,
about 12% of production costs. Nearly 25% of the audience was made up of young
people under 26. Usually, the average of the audience is around 55 in Italian
opera houses. For many of them, it was the first time they’d been in an
opera house so they looked enthralled.

Ripa di Meana and his team (Edoardo Sanchi, set design, Silvia Aymonimo
costumes, Guido Levi lighting). Guido Levi in charge of lighting.see the three
operas as a single piece of musical theatre in three parts, viz.
Rigoletto as a dark introduction in various shades of black and grey,
Il Trovatore as a fantastic tragedy in blue and red, and La
Traviata as a flowery dream.

This Rigoletto is “noir” rather than a dark
introduction to the cycle. The entire plot is played in a bleak night. Very
simple elements on the huge stage of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale:a movable
wall squeezing the protagonists in a deadly tie, an oversized period car (a
1940s Buick?) where the Duke consummates his orgies, a small white doll house
for Gilda, and old boat on the Mincio for the final scene. It is a tragedy
without any glimmer of hope, not even in Caro Nome, or in the Love Duet.

Stefano Ranzani’s baton and the Maggio Musicale Orchestra (one of the
very best orchestra in Italy for both opera and symphony ) were perfectly in
line with this reading of the opera. Ranzani emphasizes the C flat and the D
flat so that even the orchestra emanates a bleak color and atmosphere. Alberto
Gazale was an excellent Rigoletto both dramatically and vocally and had a
superb partner in Desirée Rancatore as Gilda; the opening night, (October 3rd),
at the audience’s request, they had to encore the final scene of the
second acts (“Sè, Vendetta, Tremenda, Vendetta”). It was harder to
judge Gianluca Terranova who was called at the last moment to replace James
Valenti as the Duke. He is a generous tenor, with an excellent acute and a
strong volume, but uncertain phrasing — probably because he had to jump
in the role without any rehearsal.

The following night Il Trovatore was played to a full house. On
stage, there were no castles, no cloisters, no prisons, just a large early 20th
century elegant living rooms with blue walls and a shocking red pyre (when
required) or arches for the second act ‘s convent. However, the Count and
Manrico (and their retinues) are in Medieval armour, whilst Eleonora, Azucena
and the others in modern attire. The heightens the timeless reading of a plot
where only Azucena is the character with psychological development. The others
are stereotypes, almost a pretext for their arias, duets and concertatos. Some
of the audience did not appreciated this interpretation of Il
Trovatore, but at the end the applauses submerged the boos. Massimo
Zanetti offered a carefully discreet conducting — in Il
Trovatore the orchestra is mostly a support to the singers.

Scene from Il Trovatore

Juan Jesùs Rodrìguez, Anna Smirnova and Stuart Neill are well known serious,
experienced professionals. Stuart Neill gave a vibrant high C at the end of
“Di Quella Pira” without attempting to sustain it too long. The
real surprise was the young Arkansas soprano Kristin Lewis; a true soprano
assoluto with a very large extension, a pure emission, an excellent
coloratura and the skill to go up quite naturally to the highest
tonalities and go down, equally naturally, to the lowest. She lives in Vienna
and sings mostly in Europe. It is easy to foresee that she will go far.

La Traviata had a single set: a large Art Nouveau living room with
camellia flowers on the wall paper as well as in many vases and pots. Lighting
provides various shades of green and of white on the walls. An oversize sofa
dominates Violetta’s apartment in the first and third act; furnished in
turn of the century style. The dreamy atmosphere is already in the introduction
when Violetta is on stage longing for a bourgeois family life. But she really
lives a Baudelaire’s environment where we nearly smell opium.

Conductor Daniele Callegari slowed the tempos gently — the performance
lasts slightly longer than three hours, with two intermissions — in order
to gently heighten the dreamy atmosphere.

Andrea Rost proved that her vocal instrument is still perfect even though
quite a few years have elapsed since the seasons when she was the major star of
La Scala . Her singing was passionate; she did not circumvent any of the
traditional virtuoso, added (over the centuries) to Verdi’s original
writing such as the B flat at the end of “Sempre Libera”. Saimir
Pirgu is young (28 years old), and athletic. His Libiamo requires acrobatic
skills. He is good looking; and his voice has thickened in the last couple of
years. He is now a perfect Alfredo, especially for his tender phrasing. He
should resist the temptation to take on tenore spinto roles, but he would be
probably excellent in many Massenet and Gounod parts. Luca Salsi is a good
Giorgio Germont but maybe too young for the role. It is not clear whether
Saimir Pirgu’s Germont senior is just an old-fashioned Provincial country
gentlemen or a hypocrite. Nonetheless, on a Sunday matinee, the audience was
enthusiastic, applauding during the performance.